by Sue Peters
A car door slammed just outside the house, and Martha got up from her chair. "That sounds like Mr Rand."
She disappeared through the kitchen door into the hall, and Rob heard a man's voice.
"I'm afraid I'm a bit late, Martha, but I'd love a cup of tea if you've got your usual brewed."
"Is the cow all right, Mr Hal ?"
"The cow is doing fine, but it was no thanks to me." The deep voice sounded grim. "I got there later than I intended. A fool woman motorist stopped without warning, right in front of me on the village green, and
I had no chance to avoid her. By the time I'd straightened out her apology for a car, it delayed me at least a quarter of an hour."
"Oh no ! It can't be. . . ." Rob's hands hovered over her ears, sheer disbelief urging her to shut out the hateful sound of his voice.
Martha appeared at the door, and behind her the tall, dark-haired figure of her acquaintance from the village green.
"I'll have my tea in here with you, Martha. I can't stay for more than a few minutes. I must go back again, to make sure the cow. . . . Good heavens ! Whatever brings you here?"
He stopped dead in the doorway, and stared at Rob with irritation written all over his face. Martha turned to him.
"This is Miss Fenton, Mr Hal. Miss Rob Fenton," she emphasised, and even through her dismay Rob felt again the odd tone of voice in which Martha, emphasised her name.
CHAPTER THREE
"THERE'S no need for him to look at me like that," thought Rob angrily, temper conquering her dismay. "I haven't wrecked his beastly Land Rover. Anyone would think I ran into him, instead of him running into me !"
Certainly, the housekeeper's feelings seemed to be duplicated in Hallam Rand. Consternation was written all over his face. If a minor bump could cause him to look like that, what on earth would a major accident do? wondered Rob crossly. Suddenly her patience snapped. She was tired from her journey, and had the beginnings of a headache which even the tea and scones had done nothing to alleviate, and if this was the effect she had on her new employer, then they might as well call off the-arrangement now, and she would go back to Devon and continue her work there. Obviously, her appointment with this man would never work out.
She stood up swiftly, the ready colour staining her cheeks.
"I apologise if I delayed you on a call," she said stiffly, "but it was your own fault for driving too close behind me. I had to make an emergency stop, and if you'd obeyed a few commonsense rules of the road, you wouldn't have careered into me as you did. If you don't believe me, take a look at the Highway Code," she flashed angrily. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll collect my belongings from upstairs, and leave. I expect I can get a room at the inn in the village for the night."
She moved towards the door impulsively, but stopped nonplussed when the man stood his ground, and made no move to let her through. He remained where he was, leaning casually on the door jamb, his other hand on the knob of the half-opened door, effectively blocking her exit. Rob noticed guiltily that he had a
bandage on his finger. The bemused look was still on his face, but a faint gleam of humour, or it could have been admiration, flared for a moment in his eyes, but once again Rob was too angry to notice.
After what seemed a long time he straightened his lithe body away from the jamb, though he still kept his hand on the knob, making it impossible for her to go through.
"I stand corrected, Miss Fenton." His voice held an undercurrent of amusement, which did nothing to calm Rob's annoyance. "I was much too close behind you," he admitted.
Rob stared at him, taken aback by his volte-face.
"Then what's bothering you . . . ?" she began, for disconcertment still lay heavy over both the vet and his housekeeper.
"You are," retorted Hallam Rand bluntly, the laughter vanished from his voice. "When you wrote to me, if you remember you simply signed your letter `Rob Fenton'. I took it to be short for Robert," he said simply. "When I engaged you as my assistant, I thought that I was employing a man."
So that was why they both looked at her as if she came from another planet ! Enlightenment dawned on Rob, and with it came an urgent desire to laugh. Sternly she suppressed the inclination. In the face of the two troubled countenances regarding her across the kitchen, it would not be seemly to give way to merriment, and she wanted this job at Martyr's Green more than ever. She had fallen in love with the village, and wanted to explore it, and the surrounding country-
side, as well as take up the invitation she had had to see over that farm. 'Something-or-other Hollow,' the armer had called it. She supposed in a way that it
her own fault that the misunderstanding had . She had signed her name to the letter, under-it with a flourish and crossed fingers, and never given a thought to the consequences of not adding `Miss'. That accounted for the odd reception that she had received from the housekeeper, and the spartan cake of soap in her room.
Deliberately, Hallam Rand closed the kitchen door, removed his hand from the knob, and cupped it under Rob's elbow.
"Sit down again for a moment, Miss Fenton. This situation is as difficult for you as it is for me."
With his free hand he pulled out a chair for her, and Rob took it automatically. She did not see where any difficulty lay, but she reacted to his friendlier tone, and waited quietly for him to go on. Martha looked relieved, and hastily filled two more cups. Rand took his, and stirred it slowly, as if he was gathering his thoughts.
"When you answered my letter, you said you were satisfied with my qualifications," prompted Rob.
"Oh yes, there's no difficulty there. You seem to
have acquitted yourself very creditably at college. And the reference you enclosed from your local vet was more than satisfactory." He sounded quite enthusiastic. "I'm strong enough for a country practice," Rob assured him hastily. She could not very well flex her muscles and show him, but she sat up straighter in her
chair, and hoped that it made her look taller than she was. "I told you I'd been with a country vet for the last six months, and I took the rough with the smooth, along with him." She did not want to confine her work to the poodle and budgerigar brigade of some bricks-and-mortar suburb, however lucrative the living might be.
"I don't doubt your—er—ability." Again his voice held that faint undertone of amusement, and his grey eyes regarded her stiffly held figure with something suspiciously like a twinkle.
"Then I don't see why. . . ." began Rob.
"Surely you must see that it's an unsuitable arrangement," retorted the vet, exasperation chasing the amusement from his eyes. "It's not only the job, it's the accommodation. . ." He shot a rather helpless glance at his housekeeper.
"Miss Fenton will be quite all right here with me, Mr Hal," said Martha. "There's no difficulty that need stand in your way there. None at all," she emphasised firmly.
Rand looked at her, uncertainty beginning to chase the resolve from his thin—too thin—face.
"You need the help, Mr Hal, you know you do." Martha pushed her point. "You simply can't go on day after day doing the work of two men, as you are now. Why not give it a trial for a month?" she coaxed. "After all, if it doesn't work out, for either you or Miss Fenton, you can always part company at the end of that time," she insisted. "It would be help for you, you know you badly need, and experience for miss Fenton."
"Rob," insisted Rob.
"Miss Rob, then," Martha smiled at her. "At least give the lass a trial, after the journey she's had to get here." Martha made it sound as if Rob had started from the North Pole that morning.
Rob began to feel uncomfortable under the vet's hesitation. She did not want to hold any job on sufferance, not even this one, that she decided with a characteristic streak of stubbornness she now wanted more than any other job in the world.
"If my being here is going to cause difficulties ..." she began stiffly, but Martha silenced her with a decided shake of her grey head.
"None that matter," she countered. "No
w, drink your tea, Mr Hal, so I can clear up and start preparing the dinner."
The vet emptied his cup and put it down on the table, still regarding Rob with more than a hint of vexation on his face. Clearly, he did not think very highly of women who signed abbreviated names, and thereby placed him in this sort of predicament. Though what his predicament was, Rob was still not clear.
He got up and pushed his chair back.
"I must go back and have another look at that cow," he said, and his voice sounded suddenly weary. He glanced down at Rob. "It might be best to do as Martha says," he said reluctantly, his voice betraying his complete lack of enthusiasm for the idea. "Are you agreeable to remaining-for a month on trial, with
the probability of having to obtain another job at the end of it ?"
"Quite agreeable," replied Rob crisply. He had said `probability', not 'possibility', so as far as he was concerned, the outcome was already decided. "We can see how things work out," she told him, her voice devoid of expression, "and then discuss it in a month's time."
"Very well." His manner reverted to the aloof constraint of their encounter by the duckpond, and he gave her an impersonal nod. On his way out he glanced at Martha, and his look held an odd kind of appeal. The elderly woman's eyes were soft as they met his.
"On your way, now," she said quietly, "and try not to be late for your dinner."
She spoke affectionately, with more than just the privileged familiarity of an old servant, and Rob sensed a warmth between the two. She reached for a glass cloth as Martha ran water into a bowl. The housekeeper looked surprised, and her ready smile returned.
"There's no need for you to help me with these unless you want to."
But she did not actually tell Rob to leave them alone. She seemed to sense her need for company, and busied herself with the cups without saying anything more until they were dried and stacked. Rob was equally quiet, absorbed in her own thoughts, and not finding them the best of company. It would be a disastrous start to her career if she lost this job, for no
other reason than that she was a girl.
Martha clicked the last of the crocks together, and broke the silence.
"You mustn't worry too much about Mr Hal, Miss Rob," she said slowly. "It was a bit of a shock for him, discovering that you were a woman. For me, too," she
added with a smile.
"I wondered why you hesitated, when you answered the door," replied Rob. "It's understandable, I suppose, and mostly my own fault. But why make a difficulty of it? Will his wife object, or what ?"
"Mr Hal is' single." Martha's voice was gentle. "That's where the difficulty lies, in his eyes. He's thinking of you, my dear. He forgets that I make an adequate chaperone, even in the eyes of a small village like this."
"Oh !" Understanding dawned on her, and Rob chuckled. "How old-fashioned ! But he needn't worry about me," she assured the housekeeper. "I've come to work as his assistant, not to give the village gossips a heyday. Anyhow, he doesn't even like me very much," she added, her voice unconsciously forlorn. "The village policeman was a witness to our first meeting," she remembered ruefully, "and even he had the good sense to keep out of the way until Mr Rand
had gone," she added gratefully.
"Ah, that would be Alf Dodd. He's a sensible soul," remarked Martha, nodding. "But Mr Hal isn't really bad-tempered," she assured Rob, "he's just overworked. It makes him a bit impatient at times."
`A bit impatient' was hardly the description Rob
would have given to the vet's seething irritation at
their first meeting, but she let it pass without comment.
"You won't have to mind if he's a bit reserved," the housekeeper went on, in a confidential tone. "He's not much used to girls."
"Not used to . . . ?" Rob's sense of wonderment increased. In her world, filled with a host of friends of both sexes, and an easy-going ability to mix with them all, such a thing was an alien quality. She said as much to her companion.
"I expect you've been lucky, with a home and a family," said Martha.
Rob nodded.
"Well, Mr Hal has had a very different upbringing." She reached for a bowl of new potatoes and began to scrape busily. "His uncle was a bachelor, and the vet here before him. When Mr Hal's parents died—his father was a soldier—he was sent back from India, and his uncle brought him up."
"No wonder he's wary of women, if he was reared in an all-male household," said Rob, understanding better now.
"Not entirely male. I was here," replied Martha comfortably. "He was but a wee lad then. His uncle was fond enough of him, but he hadn't got much time to spare for a child, running the practice single-handed as he did, and I brought up Mr Hal," she added, her voice revealing her affection as she spoke of her employer.
That explained the closeness that Rob had sensed between the two of them.
"He's very lucky to have you," she said aloud, using the present tense deliberately. Despite her reservations about the vet, she liked the elderly housekeeper, and knew instinctively that her liking was returned. It was not comforting, however, to realise that her job relied on Hallam Rand's good opinion, after their unfortunate first meeting, and now the misunderstanding over her name.
"Oh, I look after him all right. But I'm no company for him," said Martha. "He needs companions of his own age."
"Surely there are some facilities for relaxation, even in Martyr's Green ? Dances, and whist drives, and. . . ." Rob drew on her knowledge of the busy social life of her home village. "And if Mr Rand was brought up in the village, he must know the people who were children here at the same time as he was." If the man chose to be a recluse now, he could not always have been so, she thought, feeling exasperated in her turn. "He must have gone to school."
"That was half the trouble. He was sent to boarding school." Martha's tone suggested that it was the equivalent of a prison sentence. "He would have been better off here at the village school, learning to mix with all the other children, boys and girls. As it was, at boarding school he only had boys for company, and it brought him up shy. Of girls, I mean."
Rob would not have described her new employer as shy, either. She deferred to Martha's superior knowledge of the man, but in her limited experience of the vet he had not been shy in expressing his
opinion of her driving, nor backward in his caustic remarks about Hoppy. She bit her lip vexedly at the thought of his disparaging summing up of her beloved Austin.
"A lot of adults are shy. They usually manage to cope," was all that she could think to say. She perched on the edge of the table, watching Martha busily slicing the naked potatoes.
"Oh, he manages all right," replied the housekeeper, "and of course he's got Miss Verity, so it doesn't really matter."
"Miss Verity ?"
"Verity Wade," explained the elderly woman. "She lives at one of the farms around here, Wade Hollow."
"Oh, I know. The one with the white-haired farmer. He said he had a daughter named Verity," remembered Rob.
"I didn't know that you knew them ?" Surprise showed in the housekeeper's face. "I thought you were strange to these parts ?"
"So I am. But Mr Wade picked me up on the way here. Literally." Rob showed Martha her grazed hands, and explained.
The housekeeper clucked disapprovingly at the raw marks, and hurried to a white cabinet in the
Corner.
"You must get those properly washed. Here's something to put on them." She handed Rob a tin of what looked like salve of some sort. "We can't have you getting tetanus."
"That's just what Mr Wade said. But I don't think there's much danger.. . ."
She accepted the tin just the same, and Martha shooed her towards the door.
"Go and see to them right away. You never know. . . ."
"While I'm up there, I might as well unpack," said Rob.
"If you're going up to your room, take this with you." Martha reached into a store-cupboard and brought out a packet of perfumed toilet soap. Their e
yes met, and Rob laughed.
"Thanks, I will."
She was still chuckling as she went about putting her clothes in the drawers, and tidying up the inevitable debris of travel. At any rate, she liked Martha, and she did not suppose she would see much of the vet himself, except during their working hours, when they would be too occupied to like or dislike one another, she guessed correctly.
Finished at last, she flicked a brush through her bright curls and slipped into a sleeveless dress of pale green silk, with a pair of green strapped sandals to match. It would do for this evening, she was too tired to make much fuss, though the brief period alone in her room had soothed her headache away. The gentle murmur of the mill wheel had a soporific effect, and she felt too drowsy to care for the moment what the outcome of the next month would be. She realised that she was hungry, and made her way downstairs.
Martha came out of the kitchen door just as she reached it.
"I've laid dinner in the study, Miss Rob," she said, and indicated the door of a room on the other side of the hall.
"Oh, I thought. ..."
"Naturally you'll take your meals with me."
A calm voice behind her turned Rob round, and Hallam Rand came into the hall through a door that obviously led out on to the garden. He waited for a second, his hand on the knob, and a slender red setter appeared behind him. As soon as the dog was safely through, Rand shut the door and turned to her.
"This way "
His hand rested briefly on her shoulder as he guided her towards the door that Martha had indicated. He held it open for her to go through, then followed with the setter dose at his heels.
Rob stopped just inside, and gave an exclamation of pleasure.
"What a lovely room !"
Her eyes took in the pale walls, panelled like the hall, and the comfortable easy-chairs, strewn about a low brick fireplace, filled with flowers now as a concession to the warmth of the day. A bookcase filled one entire corner beside the fire, flanked by a writing desk, and the whole was made cosy by a soft carpet almost the amber of Rob's trouser suit, and velvet curtains of the same rich shade, pulled well back from the big windows. French doors stood open on to a lawn, and a small table, set for two, was pulled to one